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ELLEN
GOLDMAN - Laban Movement Analyst; Kestenberg Movement Analyst, Action
Profile System Practitioner and Trainer, B.A., C.M.A., A.P.P., K.M.P.
My Approach:
As a Laban Movement Analyst, I look at life as a dance. Movement is expressive
of thought and feeling, therefore a gesture that means something on one
person can mean something different on another person or in another context.
I look for consistency within the body in gestures, postures and Integrated
Movements, and between the verbal and non-verbal message. I read the quality
and shape of the movement for meaning. I understand art through the process
of movement, and seek to use movement principles to gain a larger understanding
and perspective on the world.
For the past few years,
I have been working with engineering students at Cooper Union College
in New York, preparing them for interviews and work working in teams.
The non-verbal work has been shown to be extremely valuable on ratings
they get from interviewers. The students quickly see how much is conveyed
by movement.
Recently, I have had
a chance to work in Italy and Brazil. Both experience have convinced me
that the work translates very well. I speak neither Italian or Portuguese,
but with the help of excellent translators, lots of visual material, and
expressive movement, cultural differences melt away.
Analyzing video tapes
of conversation is also a continuing task, as I work with individuals
seeking employment, or working in companies. It is wonderfully rewarding
to see movement add a whole new dimension to people's lives.
I love teaching in
the New York Laban Certification Program, having a wonderful faculty to
share ideas with, and to see the work change and grow.
Biography:
Ellen Goldman is a leader in the field of movement analysis having made
the study of movement her life's work. Originally, as a dancer and choreographer,
she helped found New York's respected Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement
Studies, and has taught in its Certification Program for over twenty years.
She is a practitioner and trainer of the internationally recognized Action
Profiling® System of management assessment, and is certified in the
Kestenberg Movement Profile. Her book AS OTHERS SEE US, Body Movement
and the Art of Successful Communication is an enlightening and fun introduction
to her work in Integrated Movement. She has also published THE GEOMETRY
OF MOVEMENT, Part 1: The Defense Scale, showing the details of movement
and meaning based on the three axes of the body. This is accompanied by
a video tape which includes original research material. She is currently
working on the Axis Scales as they relate to communication and has as
training video available for educational purposes.
Using the Action Profile
System, Ellen consults with business management teams and with individuals
to develop professional and personal skills in effective decision-making
processes. She has lectured and conducted courses throughout the United
States and abroad demonstrating key aspects of non-verbal communication,
often incorporating visual art as a way of perceiving meaning in movement.
ellen goldman associates
801 West End Ave. New York, N.Y. 10025 212 663-3017 fax 212 663-3171 EJGoldman@aol.com
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Tara Stepenberg (a.k.a. Tara McClellan) has recently moved
to Tacoma, Washington. She has created a studio: Breathe! Core Connections
Pilates, is working for Pacific Northwest Ballet and continues to offer
Certification trainings for the PhysicalMind Institute. The unfolding
continues.....
Tara writes, for the past several years I have been working full-time
as a Pilates trainer and certifying trainer for The MethodPilates. I did
this at Light Touch Physical Therapy in Cincinnati, the facility of CMA
Vicki Fairchild. I also serve as co-chair of the LIMS Education Committee
with Jackie Hand and am investigating modular formats for LMA Certification.
While my work venue changes, my primary arena of study is the embodiment
and expression of spirit. My primary pathway in this study is movement.
From my first encounter with Effort/Shape (as it was then called) I felt
at home in familiar territory. The Laban lens became the one through which
I taught (all forms of dance and creative work), choreographed and organized
my understandings of evoking self-knowing, and creative expressions in
others.
In 1971, as part of my position as Director of Dance at Hampshire College,
I created the first (and only) Intercollegiate Conference on the Art of
Movement and Dance. The conference lasted a week. Each day was divided
in half. In the mornings Elissa Q. White and Claire Schmais led the group
in experiences called Effort/Shape, and in the afternoon Janet Adler led
the group in Authentic Movement (a process developed by Mary Starks Whitehouse,
who had studied with Mary Wigman, who was a protégé of,
you know, R. Laban). Thus began a study of two wisdom streams for knowing/remembering/creating
which continue to nourish me on and on.
I have brought the wealth of information housed within the container
of information we call Laban Movement Analysis to many venues. I have
served on the dance faculties of Hampshire College (and the Five College
Dance Department, which I helped to create and develop), Antioch-New England,
Wesleyan University, SUNY Brockport, The Naropa Institute, Earlham College,
Southwestern College. I have presented regularly at dance and ACDF conferences.
My favorite work was directing the Certificate Programs in Laban Movement
Analysis at LIMS in the mid-80's and I served as a core faculty for the
New Mexico Certificate Program. In addition to being nourished as a teacher,
somatic practitioner and performance "coach", the 'work' infuses
my choreography (some 30 pieces) and performance, Having studied with
Jose Limon and Anna Sokolow, in whose Company I was privileged to perform,
I was already familiar with Effort expression and its inner sources.
One of my contributions to the LIMS community (beside encouraging many
really great individuals to pursue study at LIMS, individuals who have
made wonderful contributions to the teaching, theoretical and application
areas of the work), is the development and implementation of the Weekend
Format for Certification, and the inclusion of group process as part of
the certificate program. I also co-chaired two national LIMS conferences
in the early 1980's.
I am excited to be on the west coast with my 12 year-old son, 36 year-old
daughter/orthopedist and 33 year-old son/forest ranger. Time to be with
new and old colleagues, engaging with new opportunities for discovery
and integration. You may contact Tara at 253-756-1194, 253-861-8349 or
tarasdancing@yahoo.com. |
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Virginia Reed, President of the Board of LIMS, and founding
Board member, has also served on the Board of NYSEPH, New York Society
of Ericksonian Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy. She is a Laban based dance/movement
therapist and psychotherapist in private practice, a member of the graduate
faculty at Pratt's Creative Arts Therapy Masters Program and corporate
movement consultant, currently with J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. Virginia
is an international lecturer/ performer in the fields of health, business,
and the arts. She is the author of a published tape series: "Back
Pain, Relief and Prevention". Virginia is a world-champion race walker
having won two marathons, London and San Francisco.
She writes: The most important year of my educational life, 1971-72,
took place at the Dance Notation Bureau, achieving a CMA. It brought together
all the themes I had been struggling so hard to integrate. I had started
as an undergraduate majoring first, in biology and chemistry and later,
psychology and French. I became a graduate student in sociology and psychology,
while supporting myself doing case working with Vietnam Nam Veterans addicted
to heroin. On weekends I danced professionally in clubs and with jazz
bands. Weekdays I studied modern dance with Erik Hawkins, ballet with
Charlotte Wile and jazz with Luigi. I loved all sports both as a participant
and observer.
I had first met Irmgard Bartenieff, my mentor and friend, in 1970 at
a two week workshop for dance therapists. I had no familiarity with that
term but was actually practicing dance therapy both with the veterans
and staff at the Veteran's Social Service Center and, as a volunteer at
the NYS Psychiatric Institute. There I led patient and staff groups which
I called motion and emotion sessions.
Suddenly, my life style with its seemingly unrelated choices was given
validity, order and encouragement. I literally dropped everything: a full
time job, an unhappy living arrangement and unsatisfying post-graduate
program to sign up for the year-long CMA program.
Imagine a year of study with Irmgard Bartenieff and Janis Pforsich and
another year of assisting the greats while being exposed in person, to
the teachings of Marion North, Judith Kestenberg, Warren Lamb, Martha
Davis, and other pioneers in the movement field. It doesn't get any better.
In subsequent years of teaching LMA at NYU Columbia, ADF and many other
venues, co-presenting with Irmgard at conferences and continuing my education
in systems approaches to therapy, I was continually fed by the remarkable
richness of Laban's theories.
I could present with confidence at Grand Rounds in many local and area
hospitals with a language and theory to describe and explain change in
behavior from a Laban/Bartenieff perspective. For years I experimented
in my own studio with new approaches to movement with professional men
and women, mostly non-dancers, while lecturing nationally on body-mind
themes from dance and biofeedback to injury and psyche.
In my hospital practice I moved dance therapy from the "mental"
hospital setting to the "physical"medical center, specifically
the heart and kidney transplant unit of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical
Center. I had the joy of bringing along with me a group of NYU dance therapists
with CMAs including Monica MacNamara, Cece Ritter, Bonnie Robbins, and
video artist, Judy Drosd.
We spent much of our time viewing tapes of our hospital work, dancing
together improvisationally, laughing a lot, crying sometimes, and, over
long delicious meals, returning repeatedly to the question of movement
and meaning. We had the liberty and support of two department directors:
Mary Clark and Honey Shields, who later became an original LIMS board
member.
Now, while continuing my private practice, my interest is the application
of movement theory in corporate environments relating it to the areas
of communication, wellness and motivation. At Chase I work within an LMA
frame combining movement, hypnosis, guided imagery, improvisational theatre,
and meditation in individual and group sessions.
I do public speaking engagements for various corporate gatherings from
retreats and conferences to dinners, etc. My clients have included: Young
Presidents Organization, Starwood Hotels, Time Warner, Sony, Con Edison
and many others.
My fascination with body language extends to the sound bite world of
media. I have been interviewed numerous times on the radio, have appeared
on Good Morning America and was asked back to help write and appear in
a series on body language. Fox Cable news has asked me to analyze on different
occasions the body language of George W. Bush, Tom Daschle, Jesse Jackson
and others. An ABC talk show host asked me for an extensive description
of flirting behavior while modeling it to a live audience.
Applying LMA in numerous and diverse ways has always been a powerful
lure for me. Irmgard personified that diversity and was such a vital role
model for me.
The challenge for me in the media is to condense, simplify and stay authentic
to the depth of LMA, while entertaining and informing.
My work as President of the Executive Board of LIMS is an ongoing gift.
What a community! I am a part of an outrageously brilliant, motivated
group of people who inspire me daily. Karen Bradley, Regina Miranda and
Kris Lindahl are at the helm.
Balance is my ongoing challenge. I sometimes achieve it with the help
of my mate,family, close friends, and community. Dancing, especially to
live music remains the joy of my life. From East Coast or West Coast swing,
salsa, zydeco or free style, I do it regularly. A weekly Yoga practice
and a daily race walk along the Hudson River seems to provide me with
the grounding that I need to thrive in this crazy wonderful city. |
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JANICE MEADEN, MA, CLMA, RMT: Janice is Director and Faculty
of the Integrated Movement Studiessm Intensive Certificate Program in
Laban/Barteneiff Movement Studies at the University of Utah. She is also
on the faculty of the IMSsm San Francisco Bay Area
Weekend Certificate Program and teaches in the IMSsm
Post Certificate Hands On For Repatterning trainings. Janice has taught
on Laban Certification faculties since 1982, when along with Peggy Hackney
and Pam Schick, she was part of the first faculty in the Laban Movement
Studies Certification Program at the University of Washington.
In 1994, she moved this program to the University of Utah where the
program now offers 18 graduate credits to participants and is part of
the Department of Modern Dance’s MFA scholarship awards program.
In 1995, along with Ed Groff, Peggy Hackney and Pam Schick, Janice formed
the training team of Integrated Movement Studies (IMSsm),
a training team of Certified Laban/Barteneiff Movement Analysts, and feels
continually blessed to build the Laban/Bartenieff work with such incredibly
creative and loving colleagues.
Janice completed 1970 the Body Mind Centeringsm Training Program and
interfaces this work with the Bartenieff Fundamentals and Pilates as a
Registered Movement Therapist in a one to one somatics practice.
Janice graduated from Syracuse University with a BA in English Literature.
She performed with Kinetics Company in Seattle WA, taught as a guest artist
at colleges and universities. She is cofounder of the "On The Boards"
a performing space for the Contemporary Arts in Seattle, WA. Janice spent
five years as Head of Modern Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing
Arts. While there, she designed an undergraduate and children's dance
training program based on the Laban work and toured Asia as a guest lecturer
in Modern Dance and Laban Movement Studies. She returned to the United
States in 1990, to pursue a Masters of Arts in Education at Antioch, Seattle
and graduated with a specialization in Adult Learning Theory and Practices.
The question that guided her while pursing her studies was, "What
is transformative learning and how can movement facilitate it?" This
question continues to guide her learning, teaching and personal "becoming."
Janice recently abandoned the grey and cold of the Northwest for her
new home in Santa Barbara, CA. Along with her partner, Jack Hewett, she
is redesigning her home, her career and her new mid-life being. She is
continually thrilled at how her movement knowing guided by the Laban/Bartenieff
map gives her joyful engagement in all of these! |
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Her doctoral research was supported by a Fulbright/Hayes
Grant for research in Spain, and she has also held grants from the Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She
is currently on sabbatical, with support from an NEH grant, to write the
biography of early American dancer-actor, John Durang. Lynn Brooks has
participated as both NEH Fellow and faculty member in the Aston Magna
Early Music Academies, and was an invited participant at the International
Council for Traditional Music's symposium on Musical Iconography in Burgos,
Spain in 1996. She served as Editor of Dance Research Journal from 1994
through 1999, and has been on the boards of the World Dance Alliance,
the Society of Dance History Scholars, and the Congress on Research in
Dance.
Lynn became a CMA through the 1991-92 Year-Long program in NYC, under
teachers John Chanik, Ellen Goldman, Clio Pavlantos, and Janis Pforsich.
Her cert. project was a reconstruction of a 17th-century Spanish social
dance, "el villano," with a style anaylsis and notation of the
dance. Based on that research, Lynn undertook a full-scale translation
of a 17th-century Spanish dance manual and analysis of the social, historical,
and movement context of the dances of that period in Spain. LMA is a central
part of that analysis. The book, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century
Spain: Juan de Esquivel Navarro and his World, will be out shortly through
Bucknell University Press. She has published numerous articles on dance
history, dance education, and movement analysis.
Lynn remains an active dancer and choreographer, working in those contexts
at F&M and with the Grant Street Dance Company, a multi-generational
modern dance company in Lancaster, PA. Her teaching focuses on modern
dance, composition, movement analysis, and dance history. |
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I live in Cincinnati Ohio for the last 30 years, in the
last hill and valley city, carved by the beautiful Ohio river, lush with
stone buildings and walls, lush with summer green and rich fall colors,
a very active arts community, and the heritage of being the bearer of
old money and racism buried underneath the magnificent new Underground
Railroad Freedom Center, where abolitionists and the brave Harriet Tubman
planned the secret safe havens for escaping slaves.
Here is the home of most of my major choreographic healing dance theater
rituals.
I had traveled back to my beloved Seattle to be certified by my colleague
Pamela Schick with Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden.
My Laban work began there with Kedzie Penfield, a native Seattlite,
returned from her certification by leading a workshop introducing the
material in a thorough and concentrated way for a full week. I had heard
about Irmgard some years before when my niece (in law) named Forestine
Paulay, told me about a wonderful woman, an older woman, an amazing woman
she met and began to study with in NYC.
Pamela and I began to immerse ourselves in exploring Laban's work from
all his books, and together, began to apply it to our own creative process,
long before either of us was certified. Pamela and I had two groups we
co created, one called Impulse, where we worked with movers technically
and creatively in conjunction with a youth orchestra trained in improvisation
by Bonia Shur, my partner and husband. The other was Dance Theater Seattle,
which supported our joint choreography, Faces. Then, Pamela went off to
be certified, and when she returned I left the beautiful evergreens, waters
and fjords. I had just finished choreographing “Womankind: The Shechinah
is with Her”, a 5 movement work about the power of the Embodied
Deity, Shechinah, and how women, deprived of her image, became embittered
and eventually renewed.
I had to leave with my two youngest children, Itaal and Limore, and
start again in Cincinnati with my husband whose new position as Director
of Liturgical Arts at the central campus of Hebrew Union College brought
us into the center of the Bible Belt. Pamela, with her wonderful new tools
of LMA, notated and rehearsed the entire work,"Womankind", had
it filmed and performed in Seattle at the Poncho Theater. I have always
admired Pamela and she is my beloved Laban teacher. Her depth tapped the
source of my dignity and creativity in a way the is unmatched.
It was her creativity that drew me to Seattle to be certified. I had
traveled to NYC at least 5 times to take prerequisites, studying with
Kedzie, Jody, Irmgard, Teresa Lamb, and many others. I established Growth
in Motion Center here in Cincinnati and began integrating all the work
in LMA with my passion for cultivation the Jewish culture and religion
to bring out its connection to earth, body/mind, rituals of healing, and
retelling/rewriting of patriarchal stories anew through dance theater.
In an environment here with Bonia’s rich Jewishly influenced musical
genius, I thrived, creating Tallit: Prayer Shawl, a 2 hour embodied ecstatic
prayer celebration and toured all over Ohio, funded generously for the
Ohio Arts Council. I brought a very early version of it to the Laban Conference
at Columbia University. Do any of you remember?
Those who worked with me understood that my spiritual quest was at the
heart of authentic expression through movement and its sister, stillness.
Using a 40 foot by 30 foot fabric, we enveloped ourselves, audiences (congregants)
in Jewish and universally spiritual symbols in a radical liturgy. Spatial
harmony gave me the power to envision an entire audience as part of spatial
volutes……and transformative efforts seamlessly took us all
into the earth, floated us in air, burned us in the passion drive of fire,
and flowed us into waters, linking the old earth-pre-Hebrew culture with
the vows of the Jewish wedding, transforming them into vows to steward
the planet….lifting with 10 foot poles, this huge cloth above our
heads as a congregational wedding canopy, under which we danced our commitments
to embody humanity at its best.
Laban influenced my work until, at some point, the secrets of my early
life began to take my choreography into emotional psychological directions,
and it seemed like I had to let go of my Movement Analysis mind. Caught
in the passion drive, I created Purses, Pockets, and Family Secrets, with
separate choreography for AFRICAN AMERICAN SECRETS AND SHAMAN, CATHOLIC
SECRETS AND SHAMAN, JEWISH SECRETS AND SHAMAN, ALANON SECRETS AND SHAMAN,
EARTH SECRETS AND SHAMAN. This work helped me let go of “student”
attitudes about the power of LMA. Actually, it was the Laban discipline,
and the Laban capacity to seamlessly connect all life experience to movement
that allowed me the courage to let go of Laban to do this work.
Many of you have wrestled with this. We learn something and no matter
how freeing is the learning, it is only a gateway into the treasures of
our own yearnings and dreams.
But, no matter how much I learned and let go of, the material gave me
a structure with to deepen my own personal explorations.
After studying some with Moshe Feldenkrais I met Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
on her guest residency at Ohio State. Again i learned the language I needed
to discriminate what may all have been the Flow continuum, or at least,
it galvanized me out of mental, intellectual, experience and gave me the
validation of my ability to touch, to feel energy, and to re-paattern
the defenses armored in my body/mind so that my work as a healer thrived.
Bonnie’s work rested in the body, and Laban intellectually used
spatial harmony and effort and Bartenieff gave body parameters, and my
other teacher, Barbara Brennan, gave validity to energy. Again I wrestled,
trying to make each new teacher validate the others work.
finally I said, “enough”.
Here comes Flight, Fight, Freeze:! And the Wolf shall Dwell with the
lamb) now changed to a non biblical name so I can do it in the schools……….FLIGHT,
FIGHT, FREEZE! See these articles in the press to understand where I am
now.
http://enquirer.com/editions/2003/02/08/loc_fanchon08.html
http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/09/29/tem_dance_lovers.html
http://www.artspike.org/publish/public_html/article.php?sid=1797
Imagine the joy of working with 8 dynamite dance artists who want also
to free themselves of the constraints of “formal” movement,
and find the strength and power to survive at the level of instinct. The
dangerous place where we are not in control, where our low brain, reptilian
brain, takes over, the adrenaline rush when confronted with deadly danger,
this locale, where the nervous system and immune system and energy field
and intellect are in the service of raw survival.
This is the place where the new work, one and one half hour movement
theater with dramatic narration and chilling music have taken me into
the inner city, the place where racism and poverty and ignorance meet
the greed of big money and brutality. In this work with my company going
into the classroom, 5 of us, with 25 7th graders [some of whom cannot
even write a sentence], so loaded with trauma themselves, begin to tap
the breath of choice to unleash assertion rather than violent traumatized
repetitive compulsive behavior. These children, to whom every movement
is sexually tainted, begin to use the physioballs to hug, pound on, feel
the arousal cycle grow and subside, and where they can flee for their
lives, running in urgency and strength to escape what they could not escape
from, to fight back and win what they could not win in their streets or
family, and to be there, still and patient, while their partner, friend,
classmate, unwinds from an encounter with danger….stress, trauma.
Be there, listen. Not make fun of. Wait until the body releases its pain,
respectfully.
Laban to me is the vision of a creative genius organizing reality to
be more beautiful that it is when we are unconscious.
I practice dealing with the losses in my life by dancing, moving, authentically,
with my husband as he evolves sound……with my colleagues………in
my classes.
I feel this year I must re-invent myself to meet the fact that 30 years
ago here in Cincinnati I offered holistic approaches to life as the pioneer…..
20 years ago The governor invited me to do the closing ceremony for his
Inauguration and Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame inducted me, the only
artist beside Maya Lin to be chosen.
Now, many people are integrating some aspects of the work, but no one
has the rich combination or has done so much with LMA here. I do another
year of creative class offerings, with a subtle change in my teaching.
I have a wonderful administrator, a dancer herself, who helps me keep
on going, deepening, and contributing.
It is time for me to take the next step, not sure what yet. This year
I am inviting FFF company members to assist me when I teach......a great
way to co-create, and stimulate my approach and stay young at heart. This
year there is lots of need for me to get into ‘movements’.
Peace movement, racial harmony movement, civil liberty movement………and
find new ways to affect change……perhaps, the continuing to
do my work isz the most powerful way to affect change......small changes.
Going to neighborhood meetings trying to get police brutality to be transformed,
and doing movement rituals with all to the community.
It is time.
I am ready.
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